SDN meets Labs Bangalore: Impressions

Thanks again to everybody who made it to the SDN meets Labs/NetWeaver Technology Tour ’05 event in Bangalore. Also thanks to Raja and Subramanian for posting their weblogs about the event and sharing some great snaps. I had taken off for a short vacation right after the event and hence the delay in sharing my own impressions.

I was excited about this event due to a strong spurt of content contributions on SDN that has been coming in lately from the Indian quarters. The energy and enthusiasm for SDN that I saw in our Indian community members at the event simply made it a very fulfilling and memorable experience for me. Apart from the decent local attendance, people had flown in from Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune as well to attend the event (I must not forget the representation of Saudi Arabia).

We had a full three days of opportunity to meet and treat each other. The majority of the gathering was non-SAP and it was quite refreshing for me to learn about the development issues, information challenges and the group dynamics in development teams in the different companies. We had lots of informal space to get very candid about anything and everything that mattered to us. And if a healthy community is defined by the quality of communication between its members and a clear understanding of the common goals shared by the community, the bunch in India representing SDN is right up there.

I overheard one SDN member thank another for providing him an answer within 2 hours of his posting a question in the SDN forum. The answer helped him meet the deadline for delivering a solution to his customer the same day, just when he was losing hope and nobody could come to his rescue in his own company. Inspiring stuff and way to go for the SDN community!